Author’s note: I should point out that this fic has some more sexual and violent images than my usual family friendly level of work. By Futurama standards, however, I think this would be considered tame.

“This is fun, so far,” said Munda, referring to the What-If simulation that she, her husband Morris, their daughter Leela, and the rest of the Planet Express crew were watching, “It’s interesting to see how your lives could have went differently.”

“I don’t know,” said Leela with a touch of worry, “sometimes these stories have some tragic twists.”

“Shut up, everyone!” said Bender, “I wanna see what happens next!”

They paid attention to the story on the screen again.

Fry, or “the Flaming Fry” as the media now called him, was feeling rather miserable. He missed Leela. He had been asking her out a lot, but she had kept rejecting him while seeing other guys. What was wrong with him?

He sometimes thought she was jealous of his powers, but she kept denying this. He knew she was lonely and they felt the same way about it, so why did she reject him?

He decided to go out. Maybe a flight at night would help ease his mind.

At Mom’s friendly Robot Company, the owner known only as “Mom” threw the paper down in disgust.

The paper read of a fairly recent victory the Future Foursome had after battling the invading shape changing Insect People. Most of them were sent to the dimension called “the Reverse Area” while the ones who previously escaped were hypnotized into permanently becoming goats.

“Farnsworth,” she said like a curse, “I think I want my headlines back.”

“Mommy,” said Igner, her youngest son and henchman, “the dome thing is ready.”

“Ah, wonderful,” said Mom, still looking at the paper. She eventually left the room.

As Leela descended down the ladder, she couldn’t believe the sight below her. It was a village! It was a rather dilapidated village, but it was unmistakably a society. She started to wonder if the urban myths of mutants living in the sewers were true. She shook her head; the people down there were probably some of those homeless people Fry would sometimes mention.

She was too worried about Nibbler to be concerned about anything else. She finally reached the village, but Nibbler could be anywhere by then. She began to lose hope until she saw some shadowy shapes in front of her.

“Uh, hello there,” she said, “sorry, but I’m looking for my pet. Have you seen him? He’s the size of a baby, has three eyes, fangs, and black fur.”

Suddenly, she got a good look at the people as they approached her. She gasped; they all have various deformities, extra body parts, fewer body parts than expected, and some animal-like qualities. They were sewer mutants! She assumed a defensive position.

“Chill, lady,” said a guy with a large forehead, “we’re harmless. Well, most of the time. Your pet’s chasing some guy heading toward that house over there.”

“Oh, okay!”

Leela ran toward the house the man pointed out and saw Nibbler at the window looking inside, still pondering the existence of this ”inhuman“ society. She quickly grabbed him.

“Nibbler, honey, don’t rush off like that!” she said while cuddling him.

Nibbler made animal noises and pointed at the house’s window. Leela looked inside.

She gasped. The mystery figure nibbler was chasing was holding two robed mutants hostage.

Mom was sitting in a chair with a dome over her head. Her three adult sons were actually performing this experiment she designed with herself as the voluntary subject.

“Lower the dome!”

Igner pulled a lever and the dome lowered. Arcane energies seeped from the machines and to her head.

“Yes,” said Mom, “I feel it working! Wait, what’s happening?”

The energies were soon out of control. The boys narrowly escaped as the room exploded.

Leela pondered her options. Part of her was thinking that this wasn’t her business. Another part of her said to help out these strangers. She took a breath, figuring she had little to lose anyway, and jumped through a window.

Her various cuts made her wish that she tried the door.

Everyone turned to her.

“Friend of yours?” asked the costumed man. Leela could now tell that he was wearing a black mask under his hat and had orange whiskers.

“Uh, never saw her before, Zookeeper,” said one of the hooded figures in a male voice. He seemed not to be sincere about it.

“Well,” said the Zookeeper, “I was planning to hold you two hostage, but no one cares about mutants anyway. So, I guess I‘ll just finish you three witnesses off!”

“You know,” said the other hooded figure, this one with tentacles for arms and a female voice, “if you didn’t want witnesses, you could have just passed our house in the first place.”

“Silence! Citizen Snips, get them!”

A tiny crag leapt from his pocket and crawled to Leela, pinching her ear.

“OW!”

Nibbler jumped and gobbled up the crab in one bite, freeing Leela’s ear. She rubbed it and concentrated on the home intruder, who was now fleeing.

Leela ran after the Zookeeper, but she started feeling light headed as soon as she left the house.

My cuts, she thought, I’m bleeding more than I thought I was.

Soon, she began to black out and collapsed. The last thing she heard was that female voice saying, “Morris, get the alcohol! I mean the medicine! Quick!”

Above Manhattan, the Flaming Fry still couldn’t get Leela out his mind. He felt lucky to even know such a beautiful, capable woman. However, life had given her a curve ball. With no parents and a job she hated, she must have finally started to fell like being in charge of her destiny when she joined Planet Express, which is what Fry wanted her to have. However, she had been in a funk since some of them got super-powers. She was acting more like she did when they first met, except without the professional attitude.

Lately, Fry had been trying to focus on a crime-fighting hobby to get his mind of her. The purpose of the Future Foursome was exploration and scientific stuff, but he figured that wouldn’t stop him from fighting evil on his own time. The trouble was that his flame was so short-lived, he kept having to land on rooftops. Right now, he was in the sky.

Below him, he then noticed a portly figure escaping from a manhole. As he got closer, he noticed his outfit. He recognized it as the one the super-villain, the Zookeeper, wore. He had been using trained animals to perform heists.

This could be a good distraction, thought Fry as he flew down.

Leela heard Nibbler whimpering as she regained consciousness. She noticed him at her side and the hooded figures looking over her.

“You okay?” asked the male figure.

“I guess,” said Leela, now noticing the bandages over her body, “thanks to you two, but I didn’t do a good job playing hero.”

“You scared him off,” said the female, “that’s the important thing.”

“but I was trying to prove myself! All my life, I’ve been nothing! Then, my friends became heroes overnight and I was left with nothing again!”

“You shouldn’t be so hard on yourself.”

“You just don’t get it!” Leela shouted, “almost everyone else on the surface is either from Earth or settled there with their families! I was found at the Orphanarium with an note that was never translated!”

“Never translated?”

“Let me finish! My medical records, my x-rays, they say I’m ‘otherwise human’. Everything except my hair and my eye counts as human, but that makes it more frustrating! I’m still listed as an ‘unknown race’! I don’t know if there’s anyone else like me! And, then I was finally about to gain acceptance, and it’s gone! I’m just second fiddle to my co-workers again! You have no idea, none at all, what it‘s like to be the only one of your kind!”

“Well, we have an inkling.”

“Morris!”

Leela, out of shear frustration, grabbed the two strangers by their collars and held them against the wall.

“HOW CAN YOU?”

They reached for their hoods and removed them.

Leela was silent when she saw their faces. She gently put them down.

“I guess you do,” she finally, quietly, said.

In the heart of Manhattan, there was a battle between the resourceful Zookeeper and the minimally powered Flaming Fry.

“You may be tough,” said the Zookeeper, “but your flame is short lived!”

He took out a giant wrench from out of his jacket and unscrewed a fire hydrant. A rush of water hit Fry, dousing his flame, which was odd considering his flame was made of plasma or something. Fry had a brief fall that sent him to the pavement, but he landed on his hands and knees. They still hurt, though. His other problem was seeing through the steam created from the water hitting his flame. He couldn’t “Fry up” again for a while and the Zookeeper was getting away!

By now, a crowd had gathered. This was going to be embarrassing.

He thought to himself, what would Leela do?

Fry did something very uncharacteristic at that moment: he closed his eyes and concentrated. He could hear the footsteps of the Zookeeper. They were quiet; that must have meant that he hadn’t gotten far yet. Fry raced through the steam and found the Zookeeper in an alley.

He called forth some of his plasma, only for his hands though, and advanced on the villain.

“Too bad,” said the Zookeeper, “that they’ll be identifying you through your DNA scraps!”

The Zookeeper snapped his fingers and a lion jumped from the alley. It advanced on Fry, until it noticed the flames from his hands and backed off.

“Oh, right,” muttered the Zookeeper, “all animals fear fire and I’m facing a guy who can make his own flame! Oh, well.”

From under his coat, he pulled out a rope with a grappling hook and threw it to catch a fire escape. While pondering how pointless that was, Fry shot a small flame which burned the rope and caused the villain to have a short fall.

“Have a nice fall,” quipped Fry, “or trip, or something.”

Leela felt like she was dreaming. Her newly found parents, Morris and Munda, showed her to a room where she noticed pictures and clippings on the walls from events throughout her life.

“I always thought you guys didn’t want me,” Leela whimpered.

“We couldn’t really let go,” explained Munda, “but you were less mutated than us. Heck, you’re gorgeous. So, we put you up for adoption. It wasn’t an easy decision.”

“You weren’t supposed to miss us that much,” said Morris, “we wanted you to know we love you, but we hoped you’d be adopted.”

“We hoped you’d be taken by someone who could provide for you better than we could,” he continued, not looking at his daughter in the face, “not that we wanted to replaced in your heart.”

He was silenced by a sudden hug from his daughter. Leela hoped he didn’t see her cry.

“Don’t talk like that, Dad. At least, we’re back together now. And I don’t want to leave!”

“Leela?” started Munda, “do you mean that?”

“I mean it, Mom! I don’t have anything for me up there! And I’ve waited my life to be with you two again!”

“But even after what we’ve done?” asked Munda, “we didn’t want you to miss us in the first place.”

“Mom! It’s okay! Let’s just start over.”

“’Mom’. I like the sound of that.”

At Mom’s Friendly Robot company, a nervous Igner picked up a red-hot metal mask with a pair of throngs. He whimpered as a cloaked and armored figure waited for the procedure to begin.

“Now,” said the armored figure in a raspy female voice, “I will shall forever hide the disgrace of my new face.”

“But you only got three scars, Mommy.”

“Silence! Now, continue.”

Igner put the mask to his mother’s face and looked away as she screamed.

When it was over, he heard her whisper, “thank you, son.”

In the outer rim of the Sol system, the massive Democratic Order of Planets flagship, the Nimbus, was heading toward Earth. Captain Zapp Brannigan stood in front of a window lost in thought or, in his case, simply lost.

Lieutenant Kif Kroker, his amphibious right hand man, wondered why they were heading this way, since they had no official orders to be in this sector.

“Lieutenant,” said Zapp, “we face a powerful, inexperienced, and unproven opponent. They very worst kind!”

“Sir,” said Kif, “I don’t recall us being called to battle lately. In fact, that group on Earth, the Future Foursome seems to be doing our job lately, with less casualties, I might add.”

“Actually, sir,” corrected Kif, “I hear their presence has been requested and their official job is exploration and deliveries, not military action.”

“Mere details, Kif. Just useless facts. It’s suspicion that drives this ship now! Why, with their vast power, they must be up to something. We must stop them at whatever the risk. The first risk, lieutenant, is you!”

“Me?” asked a surprised Kif, “sir, what do you mean?”

“You will infiltrate their headquarters and learn what they’re up to!”